No Escape | John Erick Dowdle | August 26, 2015
The brothers Dowdle (John Erick directing and co-writing with Drew) have made the jump from (mostly) the found-footage horror genre to the Americans in peril genre with No Escape. Okay, it’s not so much a genre as it is a trope of some thrillers. And that’s not to say that No Escape isn’t without its moments of human terror.
The film follows the Dwyer family (Owen Wilson, Lake Bell, Sterling Jerins and Claire Geare) as they move to (presumably) Thailand, as Jack’s (Wilson) engineering job is relocated overseas. Little do they know that a coup is in progress. Jack learns the hard way when he’s caught in the middle of a street battle between national police forces and a rebel army when he ventures off hotel grounds the morning after landing to get a US newspaper. From there, he keeps on running with his family throughout the war-torn city to keep his family safe (with some assistance from British Isles-based foreign agent Hammond (Pierce Brosnan)).
No Escape is tough to watch once the ball gets rolling and the Molotov cocktails start flying. It’s not the cast – they’re all fine; it’s more plot elements. The Americans (mainly the Dwyer family) aren’t necessarily viewed as the “good guys”, but they’re the protagonists – and you’ve got to root for the protagonists to survive; it’s one of the “rules” – otherwise, you’re just a horrible person. The Dowdles do seem to try to distance Jack from the overall actions of his company, but he’s still a representative or figurehead for the coup members. Still, the actions of Americans (namely the company Jack works for) are viewed as evil by some of the locals, which provides their motivation for the coup (including killing the former leader and any Americans they find). And while there’s no explicit labeling of those behind the coup as evil, they’re implicitly treated as such. Sadly, fiction isn’t past this trope … still. Also, there are also a few traumatic moments – for both Jack and Annie (Bell), as well as Lucy (Jerins) and Beeze (Geare) – and laugh-worthy slo-mo that doesn’t quite fit with the film.
So while No Escape has moments of true human horror in a strange country, the trope of Americans versus foreigners (and unnecessary slo-mo to a lesser extent) weighs down the whole film.
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